traordinary and sad
animation. The town, which had already given shelter to many refugees
from Valenciennes and villages thereabouts, was suddenly crowded by the
exodus of the inhabitants of Orchies; the latter town, it was reported,
had been completely burnt to the ground by the Germans, only thirty
houses having been left standing.

Life in Lille became horrible. In the streets one met long processions
of miserable creatures, looking haggard and exhausted. Here was a woman
with three tiny children, two of them in a dilapidated perambulator, the
other she carried in her arms. She looked grey with the dust of the
road: I followed her. She was going to the office of some local paper,
whence these poor refugees were directed where to go to find food and
shelter. Waiting at the door of the office were such numbers of these
worn-out human beings that many of them, too tired to stand any longer,
were sitting on the pavement whilst the children were eating pieces of
bread.

One morning I followed the crowd going to get bread at the town hall. I
saw a little boy of four standing at his mother's side while she talked
with another woman. The mother's basket had been put down on the
pavement and a round loaf of bread was partly coming out of it. The
little mite kneeled down on the ground and, going at it with all his
might, he began to eat off the loaf in a way which told a long, sad
tale.

But what one met with amongst one's friends was often more horrible than
the sights in the streets. The tale of the destruction of Orchies had
been believed almost everywhere before any explanation had been
forthcoming, and in these days hatred began to rear its head when people
talked of the Germans.

"If they had burned Orchies," said one of my acquaintances, "it is
because we are too tolerant with them. To brutes we must speak only the
language of brutes. We treat their prisoners like guests; let us put
them all against the wall and shoot them and their wounded, too."

When I replied that we should have little right to complain of German
atrocities if we did what they are reported to do, I was looked at as
too soft and as if I were a woman without patriotic feeling. My friend
told me this as politely as his temper allowed.

I left him and went into the street to try to find some distraction from
his hatred. I chanced to meet a woman of Orchies and inquired what had
happened there. I give her tale as told to me, though I have not been